Single fins work great in the toob. If you know how to get toobed then the fins don’t matter. It helps to have a nice hollow peeling wave, tho…Mike
SIngle fin tube riders in the 70’s were beautiful to watch. Rail grabbing stink pig thruster acrobatics are not.
+1
Im with cleanlines. Since were making up our own definitions of toobs if your knee or hand is touching the board its not a toob. Mike
Ha!
Never look back when you’re in the barrel or you might get a thick lip between the eyes!
Just goof’n and having fun, chris. I like your definition if I was 20 years younger! I’m wondering if the barrels you posted of (johnny Boy?) with the long gun counted if he was hidden from view but that long nose was sticking out from the toob? My best toobs were probably on a single fin in those baja norte beach breaks. That was a long time ago. If you made the drop and bottom turn, you were in the barrel. Mike
No sweat Mike
I’m laughing
The OP and tubesters here should start getting barrrels and report back. All else is superfluous.
First get a slow board, with too much toe-in, and learn to squat down and drag your ass in the face of the wave. Do that, and you’ll get tubes. It’s butt ugly, but you’re in the tube. Otherwise take off dangerously deep, hitch up your nuts, trim the board and go for it!
single fins are good in the tube but not good in a free fall drop which you wind up doing a lot if you are hunting tubes
single fins typically need more volume to work well (get in early so you are not free fall dropping, give you some glide and momentum since you cannot as easily ‘pump’ for speed)
There are advantages to rail fins, for sure. That’s why we have them. Single fins can be ridden well, and have been ridden well, in a variety of conditions, including tubes, for decades. If you’re a hardcore tube hunter, I don’t think anyone is gonna say Yeah bro you need a single fin surfboard.
There are singles with rail fins, thrusters, quads, and a variety of other configurations. For some reason there is a desire to categorize one type of fin setup as “superior”, probably driven by the corporate media / contest mindset that seeks to promote uniformity for commercial reasons, whereas fin configuration is just one design element in a grab bag of factors. A dog with three fins is not better than a finely tuned magic board with a single fin. Wavestorms come with three fins.
I’m not a tubester type guy, but I think its safe to say that if you like the feel, the ride, of singles, then you can be sure that once you have a good one, it will handle the tube. I’ve been out on a small, mediocre day, where I watched a guy on a single fin longboard getting tube after tube. He just had the place wired, knew how and when to fade, and kept repeating wave after wave.
If you’re that good that you typically late drop / freefall into pitching grinders, I don’t think you’re gonna be going on swaylocks asking about single fin surfboards handling the tube. Most of the pros ride thrusters. If you surf like the pros, in the conditions they surf, then by all means get yourself a thruster like theirs. Just sayin’.
IMHO, the last 2 posts by Huck and Grasshopper nailed it.
Singles obviously work in the tube.
Different styles.
Different strengths and weaknesses vs multi-finned boards.
There is a reason why most of the best single fin tube riders switched to multi-finned boards in the early 80’s.
IMO, it’s not because singles don’t work in the tube.
It’s because the type of surfing that folks wanted to do in the tube had changed.
They didn’t switch just to ride in the tube differently, Chris, they switched because the thruster set up made surfing with a more modern style easier. Not just pro’s, but joe smoes, too. The thruster set up is the most forgiving and easiest set up ( I know,big generalization) for almost all boards. i giggle when I hear or read young guys talking about thrusters for high performance surfers/boards. Try surfing a single at a high level or controlling the turns on a MR type twinnie. Those take more skill and talent than a thruster. The single you have to move your feet(check shark country’s description), twinnie you have to control the hard turn without spinning out or sliding. Thruster is the best of both worlds and easier to surf. Modern singles are a bit different in that they are helped with more modern foiling. Mike
When I switched to a thruster it was amazing. I was riding singles between 6’ and 6’ 6", and got a 5’ 8" round tail from Downing. It was so different from a single fin. The word thruster pretty much describes the feeling I had. It came out of turns with a lot of thrust. The 3 fins allowed people to ride shorter boards with wide tails and have a lot of control. It was a game changer for performance surfing. You could stand up tall, put all your energy into a turn and not worry about the tail sliding out, or making a spinning turn that twins would often do. The thruster gave most surfers a board that could go vertical and beyond. It made it possible to put more foam in the tail so you could keep your back foot planted there. With that small board I could have one foot on the tail and widen my stance as the wave got more intense.
Singles used to have thinner tails and you’d stand further up most of the time. Look at old photos and most surfers are standing in the middle of the board, or the front half in the tube. I used to grab the rail and pull it up to keep it in the wall. The rockers were also very different, much flatter in the back half of the board. A modern single fin is a fun board, but in serious waves, I want more than one fin on a short high performance board. If it’s a mid-length (7’ up) or longer, a single is fine for me, but you’re going to be riding differently.
Well said shark country. I sometimes jokingly say I was the last guy in California to get a thruster. That was because I was surfing better than ever on my singles and had a string of excellent singles. But, I remember after getting my first thruster and adjusting to it surfing one of the long point waves north of here thinking to myself, ‘I have never surfed better than that.’ Last week I’m surfing like that, this week I’m surfing like this…Mike
…hi Rooster, the problem with the other fin set ups and your generalization too is that all still think in a twin set up or single set up to belong ONLY to those in most cases obsolete shapes. Many problems would go if shapers or people put those in a contemporary shape.
Bonzer set up is a clear example, most orders are for thick, low rockered, wide area shapes but the blast is to put em in a modern HP surfboard.
So Reverb, I have never surfed a single that I liked.
They all felt sluggish.
How can a modern single be shaped to fix that?
Reverb - I have a few single fin boards I really like, and actually have never really connected with a thruster, although I love my quads.
But I’ll second Chrisp’s question, what are the design features you recommend with a single fin?
Hi reverb. Yes, I know I’ve generalized and I don’t even put a value judgement on what is high performance or not and used the term ‘more modern style,’ by that I mean tighter arcs, staying closer to the pocket, more vertical. I also think that singles can be surfed in a more modern way and referenced that in my last sentence above with singles done with more modern foils. It still takes more skill to surf a modern single, if you will, than a thruster. Again, a big generalization. Also taking into account something we all will never agree on and that is, What is good surfing?" Mike